palmerit

Ok, so this section is confusing. I think ultimately what you’re trying to do is make a small notch at the stern end of each garboard plank so the there isn’t a gap where the garboard plank, bottom plank, and stern transom all come together. It’s called a “gain” (a term I don’t remember from building the Dory) but also referred to as a rabbet here. Here I just have garboard (with nothing cut out) laying on the bottom plank and stern transom. I think I also need to make sure I bevel the stern transom so that the garboard lies flat.

Trimming and sanding to the bevel the bottom and keel planks at the transoms after the glue dried overnight.

Thanks! I guess I mean “sufficiently happy to want to go to the trouble of mounting and framing and hanging in our house”. I was happy enough to prop it up on a shelf in my office just now.

I did some rebuilding, removing some planks, adding some new planks, and resending. It looks better than it did when I sanded through the planks to the frames. My next planking, I’m going to try to taper planks towards the bow with an eye to keeping them closer to the same dimensions and work harder to get them to lay better in the rabbet. On the “do over” I was a bit more impatient to just be done and move to the next thing. I was sufficiently unhappy with other parts that I had already decided not to mount it. I’ll probably set it on a high shelf in my work office.

I made a bit of progress on the first steps of the hull. As others have noted in their logs, the building board and supporters are not terribly sturdy. Also, it’s easy to accidentally snap the supports at the bow and stern unfortunately (I snapped one of them trying to push it in and had to glue it back together). Be careful. The photo in the instructions for the stern transom shows the stern quarter knee being attached rather than the stern transom knee. Unfortunately, I first followed the photo and then after looking at some logs more closely I had to replace the piece. But since I had beveled using the wrong piece I had to bevel some more. The instructions to put little cuts in the stern transom was a bit confusing (they really are small cuts). Ultimately, the edges of the lower stern transom need to be beveled to accept the two bottom planks and the keel plank straight on. The center part of the stern transom is where the keel plank lies. The left and right of that are where the two bottom planks lie. Since the planks overlap, the center part need to be a plank thickness higher than the left and right. Doing this right also means that the stern transom knee can be glued flush to the keel plank. I had to do some sanding down to get the planks to lie flush and to allow the stern transom knee to lie flush with the keel plank (because of my earlier bevel misadventure). Before gluing the planks, I shaped them (first wetting them in hot water, then forming them over a bottle). After 1/2 drying, I glued them on.

I'd take seriously any caution about the difficulty with planking the hull (being someone who is slowly getting better at planking). As an example, I had asked on the Vanguard forum about the difficulty of the new HMS Harpy that's coming out. James H said that it had a fairly straightforward hull. It was the more complete (and complex) rigging that made it a III rather than a II. "It’s looking to be a Level 3 ‘Experienced’ but that is mostly due to rig. The hull itself would be a level lower, but we have to factor in the rig." Chris added "Regarding the rig, I shall add a note saying the modeller can omit any rig directly relating to sails, like sheets, tacks, clews and bowlines. If the modeller wishes, they can just add the standing rigging and runing rigging relating to yards and booms only. But the plans and blocks and thread will allow for a fully rigged model - but you don't have to, you can stop once the yard rigging (Tyes, lifts and braces) is complete." I'm not saying to do the Harpy, but that some models might be II because the hull and rigging are less complex. Others might be III because of the complex hull and a fairly complex rigging. Adder might have a difficult hull but less complex rigging (looking at the two models, as a complete novice, they seem similar to me). As Thukydides said, it might just be the addition of the coppering. I'm working on the Sherbourne now and asked the same question. I ended up buying the Vanguard Duchess. It's pretty expensive and after reflecting on my rough experience with the planking on the Sherbourne (it ended looking okay because I used a ton of wood filler) I decided to hold off on the Duchess and I'm now in the midst of the Model Shipways Shipwright series (more old school build) and the NRG half hull. I'm also working on the Sherbourne. After those, I might actually do one of the Vanguard fishing boats (probably the Erycina) before starting the Duchess. They're smaller boats and if I mess something up it won't be as much of a disaster as messing up on a model that costs 2x as much.

Okay, so given that this is a lesson, I decided I’ll use it as a lesson to see if I can remove planks and redo (even though the rest of the planking is done). Knowing I can do it might be useful in the future (say if I damage the hull or something). We’ll see how this goes. I started with a new scalpel blade to cut out several runs of planks. I started a bit this morning.

One final - major - lesson learned. I should have remembered that these basswood strips are not only soft but very very thin. Thin makes them easy to shape. Thin also makes them easy to sand through. I didn’t realize that the discoloration near the bow was because I was sanding through to the support structure. The discoloration was pen marks I made on the support structure when laying out the planks. Ugh. I could take these planks off and redo them certainly. But I think I’m just going to move on and treat this as a learning experience. I will do one coat of WOP and then remove from the foam board. I’ll bring to my office for a shelf. But I’m nixing any thought of mounting and displaying.

Definitely take time fairing the stern end. Take a look at some of the nice examples to see what it should/could look like and really make sure you can lay planks smoothly. I probably spent 10-20x longer fairing the last inch of the hull than I did the rest of the hull (didn't help that I first did it without the transom and then realized I took too much off some of the frames and had to add wood back). In retrospect, I also had a bit of a discontinuity (elbow) in the bow end that I probably could have seen if I had more patiently dry tested some planks. After now 2 1/2 plankings (well, maybe the Dory only counts 1/4) I'm getting a better sense of what plankings should look like.

My new toy makes it easier to sand the char and keep a 90 degree angle (something I had trouble with using sanding sticks, even against a machinist square). It’s sibling chopper was really useful doing the NRG hull.

What’s a good cloth to use to wipe WOP? I tried using an old t-shirt but it left fibers. Maybe the shirt was too old? Are glass wipe cloths a good choice?

Next kit on deck in the Model Shipways Series. A few notes and lessons learned: Some folks put tables of contents on their opening post that they update. I thought I'd put some notes on key points folks might look out for if they work on this model. I did that post-mortem for the NRG hull. I'll doing this as I go for the Pram. - Definitely check out several build logs as you go along. While there are detailed instructions, sometimes they are a bit confusing. And in one of the first steps, the description of what to do is opposite to what they show in the photos. I decided to follow the photo, which was what a lot of the build logs do here. And one log that chose to follow the written instructions ended up having to hack things later. - I found another place where the photos do not align with the instructions. A photo shows the wrong part attached to the lower stern transom. - The build board is not very sturdy and it’s easy to break the holders on the building board for the bow and stern transoms. Just think of them as a surface for holding rubber bands and/or clips and to help set the spacing between the bottom planks. - It’s easy to misposition pieces that will support other pieces later. For example, I had too much space between the two forward-most bottom frames so when I tried to add the mast step several steps later I had to unglue (with isopropyl alcohol) the forward-most bottom frame and reposition it back a mm or two). - Another example is the positioning of the seat frames. It's not entirely clear from the instructions where these should go. It's more following the photos than anything else, unless I missed some key to unlock. I recommend skipping ahead several steps and getting the seats. You can figure out where the seats need to go and hence where the seat frames need to go better if you do them together than trying to position the frames and them hoping that things fit. You do need to (probably) sand and shape the seats to get them to fit, even if the seat frames are positioned perfectly. But doing the seats and seat frames together will probably result in a better final product, and a bit less frustration. - Model Shipways paint is not the best. It’s a bit thick and gritty. Definitely need to thin with water. I’m using it because it came with the three-kit Shipwright combo. Also, the basswood isn’t the smoothest wood so it doesn’t matter as much as it might if the wood wants “fuzzy”. - A heads up: when you get to using the copper tubing and copper rods, the instructions don’t seem to give the right thicknesses. There are three kinds. Use the one that fits for a particular step. - The instructions say to tape the sail material to a cutting board. They do say that it needs to be a clean one, which mine was. But it was a used one. Maybe it was my particular cutting board, but because it had been used, when I taped the sail down and then brushed on watered-down glue to stiffen it, when I took the sail off the green cutting board there were some green stains on the sail. I tried to airbrush paint the sails but that didn't work. So I'm having Model Expo sent me a new sail. Next time I'm going to try to first put some Saran Wrap down on the cutting board, then tape and water-glue the sail. Hoping the Saran Wrap won't stick. If someone has other suggestions, please let me know. - One challenge is rigging the mast. I'm gathering that on this kind of boat, the mast is just in place when using it since the mast just rests in a circular slot - it's not glued or otherwise secured (if you let go, it will just tip over). A challenge is that since the mast is not secured in place, you need to hold the mast and then try to figure out how long and how tight the rigging lines (one in front, two on the side behind it) need to be and secure the rigging line and knot them off. You're running out of hands unless you have someone helping you. The quad hands (from quandhands.com) are a lifesaver (I actually got a quint hands from them). Buy it directly from them because a lot of the ones sold on amazon seem to be knockoffs (same yellow base without the quad hands logo and seemingly poor quality based on some reviews - people thought they were getting a real one).

Nearing completion. Still need some final sanding and need to airbrush the trim to paint. I ended up adding some thicker trim on the stern than I’ve seen on other models to try to cover up some nasty parts. This is definitely a lot better planking job than I did on my Sherbourne and this is single planked. I guess this is technically my third planking, but I don’t think the Dory really counts. So I’ll say my second planking. The stern end is definitely the toughest part. I’ll know more what might be going on in a future model after this experience. I also didn’t quite fair the bow end quite right. There’s a bit of an elbow. And the rabbet/mortice probably should have been a bit deeper. It’s definitely tough getting the ends just right.

Finished the planking. Still need to add trim pieces, add the 2nd layer of the wale, and do final sanding. There’s some glue/sawdust mixture in a few last gaps. Turned out ok overall. I decided not to add the quarter deck molding because of how my planks were laying. I’m deciding how to finish it. I’m thinking I’ll do just sanding sealer and WOP on the bare wood. I’m planning to tape off most of the wood to air brush the black trim and wale. I’ll also be painting the inside black (so taping off the entire hull will also prevent the paint from the inside coming out to the hull).

You want to glue wood to wood, not wood to paint. That’s probably why.

Water-based wood filler is nice because it’s easy to thin. I first had Minwax wood filler but it seemed a bit too gritty - a sandy texture with pretty large grains. I like the Elmers wood filler better because it’s a lot less gritty. A saw a few people recommend it here.

Got the lower part below the wale planked.

These work well (lots like them): https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01E3PAM9Q?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title They have some flex to them (with the foam-like interior).

Use Tamiya tape. Regular masking tape is going to be garbage. Frog tape would be better. Tamiya tape works great. It's more expensive, but you don't use much. Here's blind comparison:

One nice thing about the hull on this being painted is that you can use tons of filler. Look at my 2nd planking. It's garbage. Absolute garbage. Yours looks way better than mine ever did. I had to do tons of filler and sanding. (Make sure you get some good Tamiya tape to cover up the parts that aren't sanded - the keel, the bulwarks.) After a first coat of paint, more filler and sanding. I probably ended up doing 10-12 passes of painting, filling, sanding before I felt it was okay. There are still places I probably could have fiddled with. In general, after adding paint, you'll see things you didn't see before. I also struggled at the stern end. Also had to use some filler and do some sanding (almost sculpting). Definitely look ahead in the instructions to get a sense of how things will look later, what pieces will be added later. Avoid the temptation to add things like the photo etch to the hull until you have the hull exactly the way you want it (from filling, sanding, painting). I got impatient, added the rubber pieces, and then realized I needed to do some more filling and sanding. Well, I ended up hitting some of the PE pieces and they flew into the ether. I ended up kind of hand crafting some replacements from the PE scrap I had, which worked okay.

A few more planks and shaping the wale.

I faired all by hand, mainly using flexible wide sanding sticks (along most of the hull) and 100 / 180 grit sand paper by hand at the stern near the counter. I wouldn't trust myself with a Dremel. I used my Dremel a bit on my Sherbourne because the faring lines were marked and those pieces could be fared before being installed (I didn't Dremel right up to the mark, but near it). Most of the hull doesn't need a Dremel. I suppose the stern end could have been fared a certain amount with a Dremel since you need to remove quite a bit. It's just that the Dremel can sometimes bounce around and I could imagine inadvertently damaging something like the sternpost. I protected it and the keel etc. with tape, but tape won't protect those pieces from a Dremel. As I noted, as have others, the stern end near the counter really needs a lot of work to get right. I actually printed out some photos of what it should like like to have on hand nearby. Faring took an entire weekend, lots of hours. I recommend doing a bunch of faring before gluing in the counter. But get the counter shaped right (both so it takes on a curve and so it fits) so that you can fit it in and you can mark where to fare the last frame pieces (then remove and set aside so it doesn't get in the way of faring the last frame pieces). I ended up faring the last frame piece too much because I misread the instructions and then had to add wood (and wood filler) back and start over. Definitely take your time on the stern end, look at a bunch of photos, and put some marks on the limits of the faring.

I just matched the line on the plans, using a square to mark the position (just like I did with the wale). I think one of the frame pieces was too short so I adjusted everything down. Ultimately, I was more concerned about have a nice line than perfectly matching the plans. I used a Dremel to cut down but then switched to 100/180 grit sanding sticks to fare the top of the frames to maintain a (hopefully) nice line. I might need to adjust again when I get close to finishing off the top of the hull.

Made more (slow) progress with the planking. I found that I needed to drop a plank early at the bow and don’t need to seem to need to use a stealer at the stern, opposite to the instructions.

Oh, and I read not to use water with Vallejo paints. It's some kind of combo of Vallejo product that works best (some just use thinner, a lot recommend some combination of also flow improver and retarder too). Some say water is fine - and it's cheap. But I've seen folks do comparisons and the products work a lot better.